In recent years, the use of riding mowers has gained in popularity, not only for commercial applications but also for use by the homeowner in mowing his or her lawn. Riding mowers are obviously a major advantage in that a larger area can be mowed in less time and with less effort. One of the disadvantages, however, of riding mowers is that there may be a considerable amount of manual or hand trimming that must be done, especially if there are a number of obstructions, such as trees, fence posts, buildings, etc. that must be mowed around.
Another difficulty with most riding mowers is that they utilize what are termed "belly-mounted" mowers located beneath the tractor unit that propels the mowers. For example, there may be two, three or more decks, each containing a cutting blade mounted beneath the tractor unit. Since not all land that is to be mowed is flat, scalping of the lawn can occur. Also, when mowing land that include ditches, especially narrow bottom ditches, the typical riding mower has difficulty mowing the sides of the ditches.
In addition, because of the relatively wide width of even the small riding mowers, narrow areas between trees and other structures or obstructions may be too narrow to drive the tractor unit through, and therefore these areas have to be mowed by hand. A typical such situation would be in mowing heavily wooded areas or cemeteries where the obstructions are close together.
The existing riding mowers also have difficulty in mowing both outside corners and inside corners around buildings, fences, edging, along gardens, etc. This is because of the basic design in which the decks containing the cutting blades are centrally mounted on the tractor unit. Even with those units in which the decks containing the cutting blades are mounted on the front, inside and outside corners are difficult, and the front mounted mowers are not satisfactory for mowing the sides of even wide bottom ditches.
Some of the existing riding mowers have the capability of bagging the grass, but no known mowers which have a cutting width over 60 inches have bagging capability. This is because the cutting blades cannot move the grass into the bagger. It therefore would be a definite advantage if a riding mower had the capability of bagging grass even where the cutting width is wider than 60 inches.
There is therefore a need for an improved riding mower that has the capability of mowing close to obstructions of all types and over irregular land, including ditches. Any such improvement which allows close trimming in virtually all situations should also be relatively inexpensive, adaptable to existing designs of riding mowers as well as easily incorporated in the original manufacture of such equipment. Any such improvement should also be self-actuating in that it would require no additional controls and in fact would make the mowing quicker and easier to operate in all situations.